people who were involved in this effort, he lists himself under the subheading trump campaign. hmm. joining us now, shane harris, senior writer for is in t the w street journal, he broke the story. thanks for being here tonight, i appreciate it. hi, rachel, thanks for having me. since you first broke this story on thursday night, let me ask if i ve summarized what s happened since then accurately and if you have anything to add thus far. no, you summarized it perfectly accurately. the only thing i ll say in addition is matt tate, who has now come out publicly as a source on this story, is a highly credible individual, and has never been someone who i have known to exaggerate or say more than he knows and believes. so i think that essay that he wrote is well worth reading. in terms of his involvement here, he is not a u.s. citizen, nor does he appear at least from what we know about him to have
get these documents that might hurt clinton. although he can t definitively prove it, matt tate says it s his belief that peter smith was operating in coordination with the trump campaign. quote, my perception then was that the inclusion of trump campaign officials on this document was not merely a name dropping exercise. this document was about establishing a company to conduct opposition researcher on behalf of the campaign but operating at a distance to avoid campaigning, the. the combination of smith s deep knowledge of the inner workings of the campaign, this document naming him in the trump campaign group and the multiple references to needing to avoid campaigning, the, suggested to me that the group was formed with the blessing of the trump campaign. so peter smith, putting together this effort, listing members of the trump campaign who he s operating with, coordinating with to the extent available by law, but when it comes to listing the trump campaign
here s something to watch for overnight tonight and into tomorrow. the great state of virginia has a democratic governor right now, terry mcauliffe. he said he is personally opposed to the death penalty, but there have been two executions carried out since mcauliffe has been governor. that said, 9:00 tomorrow night, virginia is scheduled to execute a man whose family and friends and lawyers contend is seriously mentally ill and delusional. right up through these very last hours, over the next 23 hours, supporters of this man and people who are concerned about this execution have been mounting an increasingly intention campaign to try to convince terry mcauliffe to stop this particular execution. nbc news has been reporting on this. they describe a coalition of groups from mental health advocates to clergy to the european union and the united
that there was nothing to this, that they were only trying to sort of bifurcate this role that mike flynn had in the campaign of being national security adviser and ultimately white house national security adviser and private citizen and holding out the possibility that he may have been doing things in the latter role. and that of course may have something to do with the other big half of your scoop, which was that versinvestigators haven intelligence reports that describe russian hackers discussing how to obtain clinton e-mails and get them through an intermediary to mike flynn. if those intelligence reports exist and are accurate and those observations were in fact recorded and true, it s going to be hard for the trump campaign to mount a defense about this saying that nothing ever happened. they ll instead need an explanation for why it happening doesn t implicate them. right? i think that s right. i think those intelligence reports are a very important piece of this. that you c
that was the followup story from the wall street journal. we reported that friday night, as that news broke. that same night, after the show, another shoe dropped in this story when one of the people who was contacted by peter smith about these efforts to get hillary clinton s e-mails from the russian hackers, one of the guys who was sort of in on it, who knew about it in realtime, he published his version of events. the title of his piece was, the time i got recruited to collude with the russians. his name, as you can see the byline there, is matt tate, a british cybersecurity expert. he says peter smith contacted him in the heat of the campaign, asking for his help in authenticating supposed clinton documents he had obtained from russian hackers. matt tate is very explicit that peter smith clearly didn t care if he had to collude with the russian government in order to